


lack of faith inside the box

by ienablu



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Illness, F/M, Gen, Medical School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 21:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6256108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ienablu/pseuds/ienablu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discouraged and banned from entering the Jaeger Academy, respectively, Mako and Chuck enroll in med school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lack of faith inside the box

**Author's Note:**

> One of the first "AUs I really want" posts going around tumblr had a medical school AU, and since I cannot take kaiju out of Pacific Rim, this happened.

When Mako is fifteen years old, she goes to Sensei, and lays down her proposition: she wants to go the Jaeger Academy. And unlike when she's pleaded with him in the past, she has done her research this time, she knows what will be expected of her, and she knows that she can do it.

Sensei smiles at her, and tells her that that's never been his concern. He pats the space next to him on her bed, and explains to her how it takes two years to go through the Academy. There's been some headway in K-Science, they know how to stop kaiju from emerging through the Breach. Sensei doesn't believe that they will still have to worry about kaiju in two years.

Instead, he encourages her to turn to a different field, one that will still be around in two years, ten, twenty. 

Mako wants to be a jaeger pilot, more than anything, and his rejection burns her. But she trusts Sensei, and she can see the logic to his argument. The youngest age for application is sixteen with parental or guardian permission. A year until she can apply, another year for required training, and the war would be over. The idea she might not be a pilot has her blinking back tears. But she understands.

His nose starts bleeding as he says his goodbye for the evening, and Mako spends her night looking into medical school.

 

\+ + +

 

It's sometime after two-thirty in the afternoon, and Mako is sitting at her desk in her dorm room, with a stack of printouts from scholarly journals, highlighting them and making notes in the margins.

After spending her adolescence moving around from Shatterdome to Shatterdome, all her possessions able to condense down to a suitcase too large for her to carry, Mako is continually amazed at the fact that she has a room, and that she has lived in this room for a year and a half now. There was the interim during holidays, when the school closed down, and she returned to the Shatterdomes, but she was given the same dorm room she had last year, and she finds it comforting. She knows where the wood floor beneath the carpet creaks, she knows what temperature to open the window at and how long to close it afterwards, and she knows the sounds of footsteps approaching her door.

Mako hears footsteps approaching her door, followed by rather insistent knocking. Mako looks at the clock, gauges what two-thirty means. Either her roommate has returned from the library early and forgotten her key, when she finds the former element unlikely, or it's Chuck, out of class late after a pre-midterm exam the prior class period. "The door is open," Mako says, raising her voice, but not yelling.

The door opens.

"Fuck this," Chuck announces, as he barges into her dorm room.

Mako doesn't look up from the scholarly journal she's been meticulously taking notes on. She smiles at her work, knowing Chuck can’t see. "Mhm," she agrees.

The springs of her mattress squeak as he aggressively throws himself onto her bed. "Seriously, fuck this. What the fuck are we doing this for?"

Mako still doesn’t look up. "Eighty-one or eighty-two?" she guesses. He's not agitated enough to have gotten a C on his diabetic pre-midterm exam.

He glares at her. "You're terrible at comforting, you know that, Mori? Absolute shit."

"There will be time to make your grade back up before the final," she says. Chuck is not looking for comfort, Chuck is looking to vent.

And he does so with a gusto. "There's no way I'm getting a fucking B in that class, obviously, but the fact that the teacher marked off for such small shit, like," he waves a hand through the air, and goes through a list of small things and wordings that he was marked off for.

Mako has turned back to her journal. "You know that communication is a key element in this field, and that if the teacher does not understand you, there is something wrong?"

"The teacher understands me perfectly damn well, if he could mark off what he did-- he's just being intentionally stupid."

"Yes, so you can learn how to better express yourself," she says, and with this she lifts up her eyebrows.

This is the first time she turns around to look at Chuck.

He looks to be in a surly mood, and Mako can't bring herself to blame him, not when she looks just as irritable after getting a B on a test. It's happened three times, and then there was the time when she got a D, because she had a horrible teacher, and her mood had been the ugliest it's ever been. Thankfully Chuck had found a way to get his hand on two hanbo, and Mako had been able to practice, something she hasn't found too much time for lately, and she had taken out her frustrations on him, and on how his stance was always weak.

Now, though, he looks good, Mako finds herself reluctantly thinking. He's wearing a regular form-fitting t-shirt with some sort of band on it, and the fact that he spends his free hours in the gym shows by the way his shirt clings to his six-pack.

It's not a bad view.

He throws a pillow at her.

She frowns, catches it, and sets it down next to her desk. She'll be needing it later, she knows. Her textbook does not make a good pillow. "How did cardiology go?"

"Better," Chuck says, with no small glimmer of pride. He takes another pillow, tucks it back behind him, settles back against her headboard. "Teacher knows you're tutoring me, though. Referenced something a few chapters ahead, another student asked for clarification, I gave it. I got called to hang back after class. She wants to know how you're doing. I've been called out after class for worse things."

"I'm reading her newest article," Mako says, idly, turning another page.

"You highlighting it so I can skim it later?"

"No."

"You never do," Chuck complains.

"Do your own reading."

"I do, but there are only so many hours in the day."

"And think how many more there would be if you weren’t always complaining or arguing."

“I don’t spend all my time arguing.”

Mako gives him a look.

He huffs.

She smiles, and turns back to her reading.

Time passes, and Mako realizes she's thirsty, and she reaches down to get her bottle of water. Behind her, she finds that Chuck has opened up his backpack, and has spread everything across her bed, from his textbooks to his notebooks to the handful of black and blue pens that seem to end up everywhere other than where he needs them.

She wants to comment on it, but them winding up at each other's dorm rooms is hardly something to comment on anymore.

There's a knock at the door-- the shave and a haircut tune that her roommate keeps teaching her.

"It's open," Mako calls.

"Good evening Mako," Leslie greets, sounding forcibly cheery. Her tone then goes tentative, when she adds, "Good evening, Mako's friend."

Chuck just grunts, and Mako turns to see that he hasn't looked up from where he's frowning at his textbook.

Leslie looks between the two. “ _Good_ friend?”

Mako shakes her head.

“Good. I had to stay up all night to finish a paper, I'm tired, I'm going to take a nap," she declares, before she kicks off her shoes, and flops down onto her bed. 

Leslie is still sleeping a few hours later, when Chuck starts shoving his things into his backpack.

Mako rolls her neck. “Study break?”

“Going for a jog. Care to come with?”

She shakes her head. “I’d rather nap.”

“Want me to come with?”

Mako rolls her eyes. “Enjoy your jog, Chuck.”

 

\+ + +

 

Mako's phone buzzes with a text message just after she returns from her class’s ten minute break. She glances at the clock, and sees that Chuck would have just gotten out of class. Although Mako does her best to not think about Chuck being her boyfriend, if Chuck were her boyfriend, he would be a terrible boyfriend for texting her during class. As it were, Mako took too long on her nap yesterday and had to stay up late, and Chuck is still a dick.

Five minutes later, her phone buzzes with another text message. She ignores it, as well as the buzz five minutes later. She just keeps her gaze on the teacher, taking notes, and cursing Chuck in Japanese.

Five minutes after that, her phone starts buzzing indicating a phone call, and she sneaks it out of her pocket. The caller ID says _Oba_.

She shoots out of her seat and takes the stairs up lecture hall exit two at a time. She answers on the last ring, with a breathless, "Tamsin?"

"Mako," she greets. She sounds tired, but there’s a cheer in her voice. "You got my texts, didn't you?"

Tamsin always texts Mako when she's about to call, to alert Mako in case she’s busy. To give Mako time to reply if she is. Mako resists the urge to sigh, and she feels foolish for forgetting. "Of course.”

"You’re lying. I got you in class, didn't I?"

"Chuck took the class last semester, if there's any gaps in the lecture notes I can just ask him to clarify."

Tamsin hums.

“So what’s the news?”

“What news?” Tamsin asks, sounding far too innocent.

“You only call during the school day when there’s big news,” Mako says.

“I may have had a follow-up appointment with chemo therapist today,” she says.

Tamsin never takes this light, airy tone when it’s bad news, but Mako grips her phone tighter all the same. “And?”

“I may be showing signs of going into remission.”

“ _Yappari_ ,” Mako breathes out. 

Tamsin laughs. “ _Kokyuu suru_ , Mako-chan. Now get back to class.”

 

\+ + +

 

She misses twenty slides of the lecture. She had read the chapter the night before, but given the late hour, she had been planning on some clarification from the lecture. 

After class, Mako heads to Chuck’s room. She waves to Andre, Chuck’s fellow international dorm mate, earbuds in and underlining his textbook.

Mako pulls out her notes from her class, and starts to review them. She doesn’t ask Chuck about the gaps in her lecture notes, and she doesn't mention that Tamsin called.

It quiet in Chuck’s room. He’s at his desk, she’s on his bed.

Mako tries not to talk about Tamsin, not when she can help it. It's too close, too raw. She can talk about Sensei as her father, trading stories with Chuck about Herc, but Chuck doesn't like to talk about Scott either.

There's an interesting relationship with your dad's co-pilot – Tamsin has become an aunt to Mako in some ways. It's a complicated relationship, and Mako doesn't like to spread it around. She keeps Tamsin to herself, keeps her wisdom and kind words and stories between them, and them alone.

It takes twice as long to get through the chapter, having to reread the textbook and find additional references online, but she gets through it.

 

\+ + +

 

Mako heads to the library, and she frowns as she approaches the building.

Chuck is standing on the sidewalk, a cigarette in hand, pacing.

He stops when she comes closer, and looks at her, and looks nervous. Chagrined, almost. He doesn't put it out, though, just flicks away the ash.

Mako walks past him, into the library, to their normal spot, where his bag has exploded across the desk, and starts unpacking her materials. It's unusual to have a spot on a Friday night, but after Chuck kept getting unwillingly sexiled, he and his roommate came to an arrangement, and now Chuck willingly spends the night at the library, so much as he can.

Chuck joins her a few minutes later, still smelling of nicotine.

Mako's already deep in her notes, highlighting her book on the details missing from the lecture.

"How much peace and quiet do I get before you start in on your rant?" Chuck asks, after a few minutes.

Mako's lips thin. "Smoking kills," she says, tightly. "You'll get lung cancer, and you'll die." It's hard to talk about cancer, sometimes, around the days when Tamsin's called. She can talk about medicine as clinically as anyone else, but once it gets personal, it gets hard to shake.

"It's not like I'm smoking a pack a day," Chuck points out, as he always points out. His tone changes a bit, becomes a bit more defensive, as he continues, "And it's not like there's the same incentive to quit as there used to be."

"True," Mako agrees, because she has to give him this point.

They hooked up with some frequency their freshman year, a few weeks into their shared biochemistry course. It was the hardest course either of them have had to date, and the teacher seemed determined to fail everyone, and had nearly succeeded. Mako and Chuck had paired up as study buddies, their sessions got longer and longer, and eventually the stress lead to a hook-up, then another.

When he had started stress smoking, she had forbid it – she wouldn't sleep with him when he smelled of nicotine.

He knocked it off, except for midterms, and even then he tried sneaking them, doing it as far away from Mako as he could manage. The smell lingered. She asked him to stop.

He did.

Things got a bit more serious between them.

With a parent-visit weekend coming up, Mako rehearsed how she was going to Sensei tell. What she was going to tell Sensei. But there were last-minute PPDC matters, and Sensei did not come. Nor Herc.

Instead, Scott came to visit. Chuck revealed the nature of his and Mako’s relationship.

Mako had not appreciated Scott calling her a fine piece of ass, nor did she appreciate Chuck’s leering agreement. Their relationship skidded to a halt. It was weeks before they spoke.

It’s been over a year since they fucked.

It’s a Tuesday night, which is Andre’s designated night to spend with his boyfriend.

Chuck is making angry noises every few pages, and Mako is doing no better.

Mako closes her book, and takes a deep breath.

She stands up, goes over to Chuck, and kisses him. He looks at her after, confused, but wisely doesn’t say anything.

They fuck, and they fuck their way through the Sunday night before midterms start.

“So,” Chuck starts, in a long drawl. “Not that I’m arguing about what we’ve been doing, but…”

Mako stares at him over her practice exams, gaze even.

“It’s been a while,” he concludes.

“I enjoy having sex. I do not enjoy being your piece of ass.”

“Are you still annoyed about that?”

“Yes,” she says, simply.

Chuck wisely doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask any of the multiple questions that would make this thing they have lose its appeal.

He doesn’t apologize, though.

Mako goes back to her practice exams.

Midterms come and go.

 

\+ + +

 

At the end of the application, there's a box to check saying all information is true – that any false information is grounds for possible expulsion from the program.

Mako agonizes over the box, then revises her essay. Changes _I want to be a doctor more than anything_ to _I want to be a doctor_.

She fears that the edit will cause her application to be rejected, but she gets into medical school anyway.

 

\+ + +

 

On Monday morning, Mako’s alarm wakes her up at seven. She wakes up, turns off her alarm, and goes back to sleep.

Chuck will not be joining her on her lazy morning, already having had told her that his teacher is rumored to give extra credit for attendance after midterms. He’s confident in his midterm score, but he’ll gladly take easy points.

Mako sleeps in two and a half hours, because she can, and then moves out into the dorm common room. She’s in her pajamas, a navy athletic shirt and a pair of light purple flannel pants with cartoon dogs, as she spends the day idling in the dorm common room, doing nothing on the internet, TV on the news in the background.

The dull crime procedural is interrupted by breaking new report:

Kaiju.

She closes her laptop, eyes wide, as she watches the report.

 

\+ + +

 

The kaiju attack is dealt with by eleven in the morning, and Mako retreats into her dorm room to wait for Sensei to call.

It's one in the afternoon when he does.

"Good afternoon, Mako," he says, voice wary.

Mako does the time conversion in her head. “Good morning,” she says.

He sighs on the other end of the phone.

She doesn't ask how long he's been awake. Sensei wakes up at six-thirty in the morning. He would now have been up for over eighteen hours. The next few days will be hectic, and he will not get much sleep. Mako has always hated his duties after attacks, she has always worried, and Sensei always calls her because of it.

"In the end, the kaiju was dealt with," Sensei says, perhaps unnecessarily.

"I watched the coverage on the telly," she tells him. "It showed – is Cherno Alpha alright?"

"The jaeger has been destroyed and is going to be shipped to Oblivion Bay. But Aleksis and Sasha are alive, though they have a few medical exams to go through before I would consider them well."

Mako sighs out. "Nova Hyperion and Chrome Brutus are alright, though?"

"Their jaegers suffered the damage expected with a category-four kaiju attack, but the pilots and their jaegers are ultimately well," Sensei confirms.

"Does Chuck know about the Kaidonovskies?" He had always been close to the two pilots, loudly boasting that he wanted to be like Aleksis when he grew up.

Sensei is quiet for a few moments on the other end of the line. "I take it you have not spoken to Chuck in the past few hours?"

Alarms go off in Mako’s head. "He had class."

"As do you, if I remember your semester schedule correctly,” he says, a subtle chide in his words.

"After midterms, I wanted to take the morning off," Mako confesses.

"Ah. I recall doing the same a few times in my day. I am surprised Chuck did not do the same."

"Attendance was extra credit after the midterm."

"Perhaps it would have been for the best, had he not been wanting that extra credit."

Mako hesitates, weighing out if she wants to know the answer, before she gives in and asks, "Why? What happened to Chuck?"

"I have only heard about it third hand, but it seems that one of Chuck's classmate was not handling the kaiju attack with any dignity or gravity, and Chuck..."

Mako sighs, as she has a good guess of what exactly happened. Chuck does not hit first, but he knows how to goad others into doing so, and Chuck always hits back.

 

\+ + +

 

When Chuck is fifteen, he approaches Herc about wanting to join the Jaeger Academy.

Details on the confrontation change, depending on which Hansen is describing it.

What doesn’t change is this:

Herc had told Chuck there was no way he was going to let Chuck pilot a jaeger.

At the end of the application, there is a box to check saying all information is true – that any false information is grounds for possible expulsion from the program.

Chuck forges his father's signature and submits his application. There was no agonizing involved.

Not until Herc was contacted by the enrollment. Not until Herc raised hell. Chuck's application is thrown out, and with the falsified information, Chuck is banned from entering the Jaeger Academy with any future applications.

 

\+ + +

 

There’s a banging on the door, and Leslie gives out a shriek.

Mako startles, pushing up from the desk, grimacing at the pages unpeeling from her face.

“If this is your fuck buddy looking for a booty call, I will murder you both in your sleep,” Leslie says, before turning over, and pulling her pillow over her head.

Mako opens the door, says, “Stop knocking, I’ll be out in a minute.”

She pulls on a cardigan, and shoves her feet into her combat boots, then steps into the hall.

Chuck is, unsurprisingly, drunk.

Mako sighs. She grabs his elbow, and handles him over to the lifts, and handles him over to the nearest petrol station, where she buys herself an energy drink, buys him a bag of crisps, and then she leads him to the nearby park. “What happened?” she asks, plainly.

“It was a three jaeger drop. Three jaegers,” he repeats. His entire body is tense, and there’s a slur to his words, and he looks so angry and so hurt. “How fucked up is that? Three jaegers, against one cat-four, and now Cherno’s being sent to fucking Oblivion Bay. It’s so fucked up. Why? _Why_? Because of fucking Manila and fucking Ninetail. We could have been there, Mako, we could have been in a jaeger, deployed, we could have been giving back up, we could have been there. But fucking Ninetail, and fucking mediocre jaeger pilots, and my old man and Uncle Scott lose the ability to use their arms, my old man’s scared shitless of the idea of me piloting, and how the fuck is that fair? He gets to fucking put his life on the line for my entire adolescence, and when I’m at the age to do something, he fucking stonewalls me, keeps me from being able to join, or even join in the future, when I could have made a fucking difference.”

It’s a familiar fury that Mako has nursed on long nights after long study sessions. 

She’s rationalized it to herself, that she can make a difference as an oncologist.

It doesn’t feel the same as the difference she – _they_ – could have made together.

In the thin, angry, grieving air between them, Mako lowers her head. “I know.”

 

\+ + +

 

Chuck is late to their standing library meet-up, and he's scowling when he arrives.

"What took you so long?"

"The school has required that I go to counseling, now," he says, bitterly, as he throws his backpack down. "An hour every week – never mind that I need that time for studying, or that having to go is more stressful than not, no."

Mako doesn't look up from her notes. "Perhaps it's a good thing, then – you would not have sought out counseling yourself, but perhaps you need it."

Chuck snorts, dark, derisive. "I don't need some quack talking to me about my feelings. Counseling is a waste of time."

Mako doesn't point out that she went to a weekly counseling session for her first semester (and most of her second) with the university. Best to let him be angry, and talk reason into him later. "Be glad that they didn't seek to expel you," she says, instead. It's callous, perhaps, but she finds that she can't bring herself to regret it.

"Lovely support, Mori," Chuck says, and there's a tightness to her voice that means that Mako touched on a nerve.

Chuck is probably thinking about the fact that if he were expelled, it would be nigh impossible to get into another medical school, and that would be two professions he would be blackmarked from.

Mako doesn't envy him his position.

(Though part of Mako has always been envious of the fact he applied for the Jaeger Academy.)

 

\+ + +

 

_More than anything_ , she thinks.

 

\+ + +

 

Sensei stops by London every few weeks, and Mako spends her time waiting for his train to arrive rehearsing her speech to Sensei.

"Mako-san," he greets. He looks tired, but happy to see her. "How are you today?"

"Quite well," she replies. She reaches up, and pulls him into a hug. "I missed you," she admits, sheepishly.

"As did I," he replies, and it makes Mako grin, which makes his own smile widen.

She has a print-out of her grades, and she takes them out, and hands them over. It's still a few weeks before the semester ends, and there are plenty of opportunities for Mako's grade to lower drastically, but if nothing else, her grades currently show that it isn’t a likely trend.

"Full marks," Sensei says. "You are doing remarkably, Mako-san."

"Thank you," she replies, bubbling with pride. It makes it all that much harder for her to wet her lips, and continue, "But..."

Sensei sets down her grades, and gives her his complete attention.

"When I was fifteen, I told you that I wanted to be a pilot, more than anything. I still do. And I understand that you had thought you could close the Breach and the kaiju would stop, but they haven't. I want to go through the Jaeger Academy, I want to be a jaeger pilot.” When Sensei stares at her, Mako takes a steeling breath, then continues, “I am old enough to apply without your permission, but I do not want to apply without your approval.”

Sensei considers her for a long minute. “The war is not over yet, no. And I like to think that the war will be over in the two years it would take you to go through the Academy. You chose to pursue medicine, and I support you and your studies. You are doing well. Looking forward, this is a field you can pursue the next two years, five, ten.” He stays silent for a few moments longer. “Though I suppose there is nothing that says you could not resume your studies afterwards.”

Mako stares up at him.

“I want you to focus on doing your best this semester,” Sensei says. “After this semester ends… we can discuss your future plans then.”

Mako’s heart rabbits in her chest.

“Now, it’s been awhile since I’ve had time to spare in London – where’s the best pub?”

**Author's Note:**

> (For the record, they're attending St George's, University of London.)


End file.
